The proliferation of garbage in low Earth orbit has reached a point where it will increase in the coming decades even if all rocket launches were canceled starting now, according to research by NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

Orbital Debris a Growing Problem with No End in Sight

In summary, America is the world's most powerful nation and the world's leader in high-tech innovation because we are better at capitalism, not because we are better at socialism. Using the tools of capitalism is now our nation's best and only chance to have an affordable and sustainable human space exploration program, and the best way to minimize the gap in U.S. human spaceflight and turn the ISS into a successful initial human settlement in Earth orbit.

Unaffordable and Unsustainable: NASA's Failing Earth-to-orbit Transportation Strategy - A Policy White Paper of the Space Frontier Foundation | SpaceRef - Space News as it Happens

Radical surgery is needed on NASA’s vision for space exploration of the Moon, Mars and beyond, according to a study released today by the Space Frontier Foundation—a space advocacy group based in Nyack, New York.

The assessment calls for immediate elimination of all work on the block 1 version of NASA’s Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and to delay the shuttle program-derived Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV)—a solid-rocket booster design now escalating in cost—while reconsidering the Atlas 5 and Delta 4 launchers.

SPACE.com -- NASA Vision Plans Doomed, Space Advocacy Group Reports

Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all.

With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred.

The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx.

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them.

Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction.

Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck.

--Thomas Pynchon

So I guess that means have unti Dec. 5 to finish Ulysses.

Amazon.com: Untitled Thomas Pynchon: Books: Thomas Pynchon

The Open Graphics Project (OGP) is developing graphics cards with fully published specs and open source drivers.

Wow ... folks finally got so fed up with nvidia that they're building their own card!

Open-Graphics

The OpenDNS team is improving the safety and speed of the Domain Name System, a fundamental building block of the Internet.

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster DNS

In a follow up to Microsoft’s Strider URL Tracer tool released a few months ago, SecurityFocus is running an article which takes a closer look at how Microsoft’s free Strider URL Tracer with Typo-Patrol is aimed at fighting typo-squatters and domain parking abuse. From the article:

Microsoft Choking Domain Parking Business Practices?

The first salvo on NANOG this morning in response to the launch of OpenDNS was a predictable lambasting along the lines of “here comes SiteFinder II”.

OpenDNS: It's Not SiteFinder for Obvious Reasons

Japan said Monday it was considering whether a pre-emptive strike on North Korea's missile bases would violate its constitution, signaling a hardening stance ahead of a possible Security Council vote.

U.N. Vote on North Korea Resolution Is Delayed - New York Times

The space shuttle Discovery split a nearly cloudless sky with thunder and fire at 2:38 this afternoon, and roared safely into orbit on schedule.

Shuttle Roars Safely Into Orbit on Schedule - New York Times